The purpose of this study is to investigate the leadership strategies and curriculum management practices of the Program Chair responsible for the Bachelor of Secondary Education (BSED) and Bachelor of Physical Education (BPED) programs at a higher education institution. It focuses on the Program Chair's methods for fostering professional development, supporting faculty growth, and conducting program evaluations. For the methodology, a qualitative case study approach was used, incorporating semi-structured email interviews to collect information about the Program Chair's strategies for curriculum (...) management, faculty development initiatives, and evaluation processes. The research findings indicate that effective leadership, which is rooted in ongoing professional development, collaborative decision-making, and faculty growth, is crucial for successful curriculum management. The study also emphasizes the need to incorporate 21st-century skills, digital literacy, and critical thinking into the curriculum. Furthermore, it shows that strong faculty development programs, including mentorship and professional development opportunities, enhance teaching practices and better equip graduates to meet the challenges of the 21st-century workforce. In conclusion, the study suggests that higher education institutions can greatly benefit from updated curricula, improved faculty development programs, data-driven evaluation systems, and modern learning environments to maintain the success and relevance of their teacher education programs. These recommendations offer practical insights for institutions aiming to enhance their teacher education offerings. (shrink)

In a recent reply to our article, “What is Interpretability?,” Prasetya argues against our position that artificial neural networks are explainable. It is claimed that our indefeasibility thesis—that adding complexity to an explanation of a phenomenon does not make the phenomenon any less explainable—is false. More precisely, Prasetya argues that unificationist explanations are defeasible to increasing complexity, and thus, we may not be able to provide such explanations of highly complex AI models. The reply highlights an important lacuna in our (...) original paper, the omission of the unificationist account of explanation, and affords us the opportunity to respond. Here, we argue that artificial neural networks are explainable in a way that should satisfy unificationists and that interpretability methods present ways in which ML theories can achieve unification. (shrink)

How does microbiota research impact our understanding of biological individuality? We summarize the interdisciplinary summer school on "Microbiota, Symbiosis and Individuality: Conceptual and Philosophical Issues" (July 2019), which was supported by a European Research Council starting grant project "Immunity, DEvelopment, and the Microbiota" (IDEM). The summer school centered around interdisciplinary group work on four facets of microbiota research: holobionts, individuality, causation, and human health. The conceptual discussion of cutting-edge empirical research provided new insights into microbiota and highlights the value of (...) incorporating into meetings experts from other disciplines, such as philosophy and history of science. (shrink)

John P. Burgess is the John N. Woodhull Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Logic and Methodology program at the University of California at Berkeley under the supervision of Jack H. Silver with a thesis on descriptive set theory. He is a very distinguished and influential philosopher of mathematics. He has written several books: A Subject with No Object (with G. Rosen, Oxford University Press, 1997), Computability and Logic (with G. Boolos and R. (...) Jeffrey, 5th ed., Cambridge University Press, 2007), Fixing Frege (Princeton University Press, 2005), Mathematics, Models, and Modality (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Philosophical Logic (Princeton University Press, 2009), Truth (with A. G. Burgess, Princeton University Press, 2011), Saul Kripke: Puzzles & Mysteries (Polity Press, 2012), Rigor & Structure (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Set Theory (Cambridge Elements, Forthcoming). In this interview, Professor Burgess talks about how his interests in mathematics and philosophy developed and relate to each other. He then answers questions about specific themes of his philosophical work, with a focus on issues pertaining to philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

According to the No-Luck-Thesis knowledge possession is incompatible with luck – one cannot know that p if the truth of one’s belief that p is a matter of luck. Recently, this widespread opinion was challenged by Peter Baumann, who argues that in certain situations agents do possess knowledge even though their beliefs are true by luck. This paper aims at providing empirical data for evaluating Baumann’s hypothesis. The experiment was designed to compare non-philosophers’ judgments concerning knowledge and luck in one (...) case that Baumann takes to be in favor of his claim and other cases where, according to him, absence of knowledge coincides with luck. The results show that the cases do not differ in a significant way between each other with respect to verdicts regarding knowledge and luck. In all cases subjects were more reluctant to judge that the ‘Gettierized’ belief is knowledge and more likely to judge that it is true by luck in comparison to a belief that is an uncontroversial instance of knowledge. However, the negative relationship between knowledge and luck ascriptions predicted by the No-Luck-Thesis was almost absent. The data raise some doubts about the No-Luck-Thesis, but the reasons for doubt are different than what Baumann expected. (shrink)

John P. Burgess kritisiert Kurt Gödels Begriff der mathematischen oder rationalen Anschauung und erläutert, warum heuristische Intuition dasselbe leistet wie rationale Anschauung, aber ganz ohne ontologisch überflüssige Vorannahmen auskommt. Laut Burgess müsste Gödel einen Unterschied zwischen rationaler Anschauung und so etwas wie mathematischer Ahnung, aufzeigen können, die auf unbewusster Induktion oder Analogie beruht und eine heuristische Funktion bei der Rechtfertigung mathematischer Aussagen einnimmt. Nur, wozu benötigen wir eine solche Annahme? Reicht es nicht, wenn die mathematische Intuition als Heuristik (...) funktioniert? Für Gödel sind Mengen Extensionen von Begriffen und er beharrt beispielsweise auf dem ontologischen Objektstatus von Mengen, weil Denken für ihn einen Input benötigt, den es selbst nicht zu liefern im Stande ist. Im Falle der mathematischen Anschauung darf dieser Input allerdings nicht subjektiv kontingent sein, wenn es sich um objektiv gültige Theorien handeln soll. (Zudem vertritt Gödel eine Korrespondenztheorie der Wahrheit.) Der Begriff der heuristischen Intuition, den Burgess expliziert, stammt hingegen nicht zuletzt aus der kognitiven Psychologie, der bei der Verarbeitung impliziter, also unbewusster Informationen ansetzt und so das menschliche Vermögen erklärt, Entscheidungen und Urteile zu fällen, ohne sich der Urteilsgrundlagen bewusst zu sein. Über den ontologischen oder erkenntnistheoretischen Status dieser Urteilsgrundlagen sagen diese Theorien nichts aus. Sie könnten auch subjektiv kontingent zustande gekommen sein. Ihr normativer Anspruch ergibt sich lediglich aus „dem Funktionieren“, nicht daraus, dass es sich um Gesetze des Wahrseins handelt. (shrink)

Many pages have been written about the relationship between Mircea Eliade and I.P. Culianu, but the subject is still open for the future. The master-disciple relationship they established during the time was often scattered with moments of tension. Anyway, every time we remember the name Culianu, it will stand beside his master’s name from Chicago, whose place he took after the latter’s disappearance. The way in which Christianity is analyzed in their work occupies a certain place. And thus, because along (...) with a few other situations, their visions regarding this theme seem contradictory. These pages want to be a preamble of work about the Christian values in Mircea Eliade’s thinking, which we have in progress. (shrink)

Much recent cognitive neuroscientific work on body knowledge is representationalist: “body schema” and “body images”, for example, are cerebral representations of the body (de Vignemont 2009). A framework assumption is that representation of the body plays an important role in cognition. The question is whether this representationalist assumption is compatible with the variety of broadly situated or embodied approaches recently popular in the cognitive neurosciences: approaches in which cognition is taken to have a ‘direct’ relation to the body and to (...) the environment. A “direct” relation is one where the boundaries between the body and the head, or between the environment and the animal are not theoretically important in the understanding of cognition. These boundaries do not play a theoretically privileged role in cognitive explanations of behavior. But representationalism appears to put a representational veil between the locus of cognition and that which is represented, making cognitive relations to the body and to the environment be indirect, with a high associated computational load. For this reason, direct approaches have tried to minimize the use of internal representations (Suchman 1987; Barwise 1987; Agre and Chapman 1987; Brooks 1992; Thelen and Smith 1994; van Gelder 1995; Port and van Gelder 1995; Clark 1997, 1999; Rupert 2009, p. 180). Does a cognitive neuroscience committed to direct relations rule out a representationalist approach to body knowledge? Or is direct representationalism possible? (shrink)

Although it might seem to elicit only a marginal interest for philosophical inquiry, in 20th century continental philosophy the experience of solitude and loneliness were shown to have unexpected importance and gravity. For philosophers such as M. Heidegger, H. Arendt, H.-G. Gadamer or P. Sloterdijk, solitude and loneliness are to be seen, on the one hand, as an ontological determination of our Being and, on the other, as a cause for some of the most worrisome problems of our times such, (...) as the birth of totalitarianism or the phenomenon of self-alienation wide-spread in the Western bureaucratic societies. But none of the philosophers dealing with these matters offers us a clear positive understanding of what solitude and loneliness actually are nor what the task of philosophy should be with regard to these experiences even though they give us to understand that philosophy has one. The present paper tarries upon this question, approaching it from the other end though an investigation of the status of alterity in Heidegger and Gadamer’s philosophy. (shrink)

Starting from the four principles of Pólya's problem-solving method, by analogy, in this paper we propose a new method of philosophical counseling. Thus, the objectives of this study are as follows: the review of several methods of philosophical counseling; justifying the need for a new method, which we called the IPAA method; developing the four principles – the principle of identification (I), the principle of planification (P), the principle of application (A) and the principle of assumption (A). In order to (...) achieve these, we took into account the fact that the nature of the philosophical problems faced by the clients of the philosophical counselors, whether they are existential, moral or metaphysical, can be solved on their own. Therefore, we argued that if in the first instance, clients really need the input of the philosophical counselors, as long as the latter uses the IPAA method – a problem-solving method – they can offer clients the opportunity to self-counsel. The novelty of the IPAA method consists in the fact that it offers the client, assisted and guided at the beginning by the counselor, the possibility to carry out the act of counseling outside the office, being empowered to apply the four methodical principles mentioned above. The present study is relevant in that the new IPAA method, a method focused on solving everyday problems, is a useful method for both philosophical counselors, as its application in the office helps them to train the clients in researching, understanding and assuming their own lives, as well as for the clients, because if they are assisted in the first instance by the counselor's expertise, they can independently clarify and solve their daily difficulties. (shrink)

A book review of Elizabeth Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). I will pass over her compelling critiques of cost-benefit analysis, rational desire theory, and "consequentialist" moral theories, among many topics she dispatches successfully, with fierce intelligence and wit. Instead I want to focus on the central justificatory strategy that underpins her defense of her pluralist, nonconsequentialist, rational attitude theory of value. Anderson states at the outset that she is not that interested in such (...) metaethical questions as whether value judgments express beliefs or emotions or other attitudes (p. xiii). But I think her own answers to these questions might have implications for normative and pragmatic issues of concern to her. So I want to try tinkering with the metaethical arguments in ways that might streamline her treatment of the normative and pragmatic ones somewhat. (shrink)

Despre afinitățile elective dintre Mircea Eliade și diferiți oameni de cultură români și străini s-au scris multe pagini de-a lungul timpului. Cei interesați de opera savantului nu pot trece cu vederea legăturile spirituale și culturale cu Nae Ionescu, Mihail Sebastian, Emil Cioran, Constantin Noica, Goethe, C.G. Jung, Marcel Proust, Raffaele Pettazzoni etc. Și numărul acestora poate crește cu multe alte nume din țară și din străinătate, dovedind faptul că Mircea Eliade a fost și rămâne o personalitate care a marcat istoria (...) și cultura națională și universală și ale cărui idei încă fecundează spiritele preocupate de viața religioasă, de literatură sau de științele secolului în care trăim. Pornind de la aceste date, în cartea de față încercăm să creionăm felul în care ideile lui Eliade pot fi așezate alături de cele ale unor gânditori din arii diferite de cercetare, având în centru teme ce se regăsesc atât în lucrările savantului de origine română, cât și operele acestor personalități. În acest sens, ne-am oprit la câteva nume importante: Rudolf Otto, Sfântul Dionisie Areopagitul (alături de Meister Eckhart și Nicolaus Cusanus), Pr. Alexander Schmemann, Thomas J.J. Altizer, Sfântul Grigorie Palama (și isihasmul), I.P. Culianu, Marin Sorescu, Constantin Brâncuși, Nicolae Steinhardt, Pr. Dumitru Stăniloae. (shrink)

Professors of philosophy, the authors have done a succinct and critical analysis of some theories of truth: deflationism, indeterminacy, insolubility, realism, and antirealism.

John P. Burgess: Quine's continuing struggles with epistemological and ontological problems about mathematics and logic are traced from his first rebellion against logicism, through his flirtation and subsequent disillusionment with nominalism, to his final endorsement of naturalism, with an eye throughout to tensions among different aspects of his overall philosophy.

This paper sets mathematics among the sciences, despite not being empirical, because it studies relations of various sorts, like the sciences. Each empirical science studies the relations among objects, which relations determining which science. The mathematical science studies relations as such, regardless of what those relations may be or be among, how relations themselves are related. This places it at the extreme among the sciences with no objects of its own (A Subject with no Object, by J.P. Burgess and (...) G. Rosen). Examples are discussed. The historical development of written mathematics from algorithms on clay tablets to theorems with proofs is said to show that application of algorithms to specific problems and theorems to scientific objects is like allegorical interpretation. Mathematics fits into the modern scientific context because the sciences, beginning with Galileo, have been constructed in imitation of mathematics. Viewing mathematics this way does not solve any ontological problems, but it does show how mathematics avoids them. Epistemological problems, insuperable for object realism, are simplified. For example, we have access to relations among any objects that we can consider objectively, first physical objects and then mathematical objects of greater and greater abstraction. (shrink)

Fictionalist approaches to ontology have been an accepted part of philosophical methodology for some time now. On a fictionalist view, engaging in discourse that involves apparent reference to a realm of problematic entities is best viewed as engaging in a pretense. Although in reality, the problematic entities do not exist, according to the pretense we engage in when using the discourse, they do exist. In the vocabulary of Burgess and Rosen (1997, p. 6), a nominalist construal of a given (...) discourse is revolutionary just in case it involves a “reconstruction or revision” of the original discourse. Revolutionary approaches are therefore prescriptive. In contrast, a nominalist construal of a given discourse is hermeneutic just in case it is a nominalist construal of a discourse that is put forth as a hypothesis about how the discourse is in fact used; that is, hermeneutic approaches are descriptive. I will adopt Burgess and Rosen’s terminology to describe the two different spirits in which a fictionalist hypothesis in ontology might be advanced. Revolutionary fictionalism would involve admitting that while the problematic discourse does in fact involve literal reference to nonexistent entities, we ought to use the discourse in such a way that the reference is simply within the pretense. The hermeneutic fictionalist, in contrast, reads fictionalism into our actual use of the problematic discourse. According to her, normal use of the problematic discourse involves a pretense. According to the pretense, and only according to the pretense, there exist the objects to which the discourse would commit its users, were no pretense involved. My purpose in this paper is to argue that hermeneutic fictionalism is not a viable strategy in ontology. My argument proceeds in two steps. First, I discuss in detail several problematic consequences of any interesting application of hermeneutic fictionalism. Of course, if there is good evidence that hermeneutic fictionalism is correct in some cases, then some of these drastic consequences would have to be accepted.. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

HISTÓRIA DA SOCIOLOGIA: O DESENVOLVIMENTO DA SOCIOLOGIA I -/- A SOCIOLOGIA NOS ESTADOS UNIDOS -/- -/- HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY I -/- SOCIOLOGY IN UNITED STATES -/- -/- Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva – IFPE-BJ, CAP-UFPE e UFRPE. E-mails: [email protected] e [email protected] WhatsApp: (82)9.8143-8399. -/- -/- PREMISSA -/- A Sociologia nos Estados Unidos desenvolveu-se no contexto de dois grandes eventos que marcaram profundamente a história do país. -/- O primeiro foi a Guerra de Secessão (também conhecida como (...) Guerra Civil Americana), que ocorreu entre 1861 e 1865 e gerou ressentimentos e atritos entre a população do sul e a do norte dos Estados Unidos. -/- Em contrapartida, houve a urbanização das terras do oeste e das áreas centrais do país, o que contribuiu para o crescimento da economia e a expansão industrial. No norte, graças ao esforço de guerra, houve um grande crescimento, principalmente na metalurgia, no transporte ferroviário, na indústria de armamentos e na indústria naval. O comércio também se expandiu de maneira exponencial em todo o território estadunidense. -/- O padrão de cultura dos Estados Unidos passou a ser o ideal nortista de “trabalho duro, educação e liberdade econômica a todos”. Houve ainda um grande desenvolvimento de escolas e instituições de ensino superior. -/- O segundo grande evento que marcou a história estadunidense foi a chegada em massa de estrangeiros. Entre 1860 e 1900, os Estados Unidos passaram de país agrícola, com população em torno de 4 milhões, para país industrial, com uma das maiores economias do mundo e com 75 milhões de habitantes. -/- O incremento populacional e a industrialização redundaram em um processo de urbanização sem precedentes que continuou até a década de 1930. Para se ter uma ideia, em 1860 viviam em Chicago 102 260 pessoas; em 1900, a população da cidade passou a 1 698 575 e, em 1930, a 3 375 329. Em virtude desses fatores, consolidaram-se nos Estados Unidos uma burguesia industrial, comercial e financeira significativa, uma classe trabalhadora majoritariamente formada por imigrantes e uma classe média em ascensão. -/- As principais cidades passaram a ser um espaço de conflito e alvo de preocupações. Temas como imigração, aculturação, conflitos étnicos, comportamentos desviantes e políticas públicas foram importantes na Sociologia desenvolvida inicialmente no país. -/- Entre os principais fundadores da Sociologia nos Estados Unidos estão William Graham Sumner (1840 -1910), Lester Frank Ward (1841-1913), Albion Woodbury Small (1854-1926), Franklin Henry Giddings (1855-1931), Thorstein Bunde Veblen (1857-1929), William Isaac Thomas (1863-1947), Robert Ezra Park (1864-1944), Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929) e George Herbert Mead (1863-1931). -/- A herança cultural desses fundadores é muito diversa: foram influenciados principalmente pela tradição religiosa protestante disseminada em quase todo o território, pelo liberalismo econômico clássico conservador, do tipo laissez-faire, pelo evolucionismo do inglês Charles Darwin (1809-1882) e pelo darwinismo social de Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). Acrescente-se a esse cadinho de concepções de mundo e ciência o pragmatismo do filósofo e psicólogo William James (1842-1910) e do filósofo Charles Pierce (1839-1914). -/- Essa herança permite compreender as duas grandes características da Sociologia nos Estados Unidos: -/- • multiplicidade de temas, problemas e propostas e diversidade teórica e metodológica; -/- • desenvolvimento desse campo do conhecimento em universidades, nas quais as atividades eram financiadas pelo Estado e pelo setor privado (Fundação Rockefeller, comitês e associações normalmente religiosas). -/- Por causa dessa segunda característica, optei por analisar o desenvolvimento da Sociologia nos Estados Unidos em três importantes universidades estadunidenses: a de Chicago, Harvard e Columbia. -/- 1. A Universidade de Chicago -/- A Universidade de Chicago foi fundada em 1890 pelo magnata do petróleo John D. Rockefeller e recebeu os primeiros alunos em 1892. Nela foi criado o primeiro departamento de Sociologia dos Estados Unidos, sob a direção de Albion Woodbury Small. -/- No início de seus trabalhos sociológicos, a Universidade de Chicago deu primazia à pesquisa empírica, procurando conhecer, por meio da observação direta, a dinâmica das relações sociais. Desenvolveu uma forte tendência pragmática e microssociológica, que viria a ser conhecida como a Escola de Chicago. A maior preocupação dos integrantes dessa Escola foi com os problemas das grandes cidades dos Estados Unidos, como a marginalidade social, o alcoolismo, as drogas, a segregação racial e a delinquência, estabelecendo uma relação entre a pesquisa sociológica e a intervenção dos organismos públicos na sociedade. -/- Os sociólogos de Chicago também se dedicaram ao que chamaram de ecologia humana, em oposição à ecologia animal e vegetal. -/- Em 1895, Albion Woodbury Small fundou o American Journal of Sociology e, em 1907, participou ativamente da fundação da Sociedade Americana de Sociologia. Ele publicou, com Georges Vincent, em 1894, talvez o primeiro manual de Sociologia para estudantes, intitulado Introdução ao estudo da sociedade. Tendo estudado na Alemanha, Small foi o principal divulgador do pensamento de Georg Simmel nos Estados Unidos. -/- Entre os integrantes da Escola de Chicago mais conhecidos no Brasil, podemos citar William I. Thomas (1863-1947) e Florian Znaniecki (1882-1958), cuja principal obra foi O camponês polonês na Europa e na América, editada em 1918. -/- Destacam-se ainda Robert E. Park (1864-1944) e Ernest W. Burgess (1886-1966), que escreveram, entre outras obras, Introdução à ciência da Sociologia, em 1921. -/- Os dois, com Roderick Mackenzie, escreveram o clássico A cidade, em 1925. Outro membro de destaque foi Louis Wirth (1897-1952), autor de O gueto, escrito em 1928, e de um artigo que se tornou famoso, “Urbanismo como modo de vida”, publicado em 1938, no American Journal of Sociology. -/- A Escola de Chicago congregou, ainda, sociólogos e antropólogos com ligação com a Psicologia Social, que desenvolveram uma abordagem sociológica das relações sociais conhecida como interacionismo simbólico. A principal figura dessa vertente foi George Herbert Mead (1863-1932), que trabalhou em diversas áreas, sobretudo como psicólogo social e como professor de várias gerações de antropólogos e sociólogos. Seus escritos foram sistematizados por seus alunos e publicados com o nome Mind, self and society (A mente, o eu e a sociedade), em 1934. -/- Além da tradição intelectual dos Estados Unidos, os integrantes da Escola de Chicago receberam a influência de Jean-Gabriel de Tarde, Émile Durkheim e Georg Simmel. Seus continuadores foram Herbert Blumer (1900-1987) e Everett C. Hughes (1897-1983). -/- 1.1 Erving Goffman (1922-1982) -/- O representante da Sociologia desenvolvida na Universidade de Chicago mais influente no Brasil é Erving Goffman, que nasceu em Manville, Alberta, no Canadá, em 1922, e faleceu nos Estados Unidos em 1982. Obteve o grau de bacharel pela Universidade de Toronto, em 1945, e concluiu mestrado (1949) e doutorado (1953) na Universidade de Chicago, onde estudou Sociologia e Antropologia Social. Em 1958, tornou-se professor da Universidade da Califórnia e, em 1968, ingressou na Universidade da Pensilvânia, onde foi professor de Antropologia e Sociologia. -/- Entre 1981 e 1982, Goffman foi presidente da Sociedade Americana de Sociologia e realizou pesquisas na linha da Sociologia interpretativa e cultural, iniciada por Max Weber, desenvolvendo a ideia de que o mundo é um teatro e cada um, individualmente ou em grupo, interpreta papéis de acordo com as circunstâncias em que se encontra. Essas circunstâncias são marcadas por rituais e posições distintivas em relação a outros indivíduos ou grupos. Para ele, é possível distinguir indivíduos, grupos e classes com base, por exemplo, em aspectos como as formas de vestir ou de se apresentar publicamente. -/- O sociólogo considera a interação social como um processo fundamental de identificação e de diferenciação dos indivíduos e grupos, analisando-a no cotidiano, especialmente em lugares públicos. Goffman estudou com especial atenção o que chamou de “instituições totais”, lugares onde o indivíduo é isolado da sociedade, como prisões e manicômios. -/- De acordo com o sociólogo brasileiro Édison Gastaldo: -/- O trabalho de Goffman trouxe à luz aspectos da vida cotidiana que não se julgavam “sociologicamente relevantes”. Seus insights sobre as interações ordinárias, sobre o deslocamento dos pedestres, sobre a ocupação social dos espaços públicos, sobre a atuação dos vigaristas, mendigos, loucos, espiões, jogadores e de todos aqueles que passam cotidianamente debaixo de nossos narizes sem que prestemos atenção modificaram o pensar sociológico no mundo. Sua descrição etnográfica de um hospital para doentes mentais colaborou decisivamente para deflagrar a luta antimanicomial no mundo inteiro. Vinte e dois anos depois de sua morte, os temas e os conceitos desenvolvidos por Goffman ainda estão em pleno uso e vitalidade (GASTALDO, 2004, p. 9/10). -/- Suas três obras mais conhecidas são: A representação do eu na vida cotidiana (1959), Manicômios, prisões e conventos (1961) e Estigma: notas sobre a manipulação da identidade (1963). -/- 2. A Universidade Harvard -/- A história de Harvard começa em 1636, quando foi fundada, na cidade de Cambridge, no estado de Massachusetts, uma instituição de ensino denominada New College. Em 1639, essa instituição recebeu o nome de Harvard College, em homenagem a John Harvard, seu principal mecenas. -/- A Sociologia desenvolvida na Universidade Harvard é marcada por uma preocupação teórica e tem dois sociólogos como expoentes: Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin (1889-1968) e Talcott Edgar Frederick Parsons (1902-1979). Este último influenciou muito o desenvolvimento da Sociologia no mundo e no Brasil. -/- 2.1 Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) -/- Talcott Parsons nasceu no Colorado, nos Estados Unidos. Em 1924, graduou-se em Biologia e Filosofia na Faculdade Amherst. Em 1925, pós-graduou-se em Ciências Sociais na Escola de Economia de Londres, na Inglaterra, e, em seguida, doutorou-se na Universidade de Heidelberg, na Alemanha. -/- Nos Estados Unidos, lecionou Economia e Sociologia na Universidade Harvard durante 45 anos (1927-1973). Em 1944, tornou-se presidente do Departamento de Sociologia, transformando-o, dois anos depois, no Departamento de Relações Sociais, a fim de unir a Sociologia a outras ciências sociais. -/- Assim como Sorokin, Parsons voltou-se para a Sociologia europeia, tendo por base as ideias de Max Weber, Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) e Émile Durkheim, além das do economista inglês Alfred Marshall (1842-1924). Fundamentado nesses autores, desenvolveu uma grande obra teórica, que dominaria a Sociologia estadunidense desde então. -/- Parsons é o sociólogo estadunidense mais conhecido no mundo. Em geral, seus críticos entenderam-no como um pensador conservador, preocupado basicamente com o bom ordenamento da sociedade. Seu interesse era determinar a função que os indivíduos desempenhavam na estrutura social. Entendia o indivíduo como expressão dessa estrutura, a qual devia ser mantida e preservada. Caso isso não ocorresse, deviam entrar em ação os mecanismos de controle social (moral, ética, sistema jurídico e penal etc.), como instrumentos preventivos ou corretivos. -/- Seu trabalho exerceu influência em diversos países e ambientes acadêmicos (particularmente nas décadas de 1950 a 1970), até mesmo na então União Soviética, onde, em 1964, ministrou aulas sobre a Sociologia estadunidense a convite da Academia de Ciências da União Soviética (URSS). -/- Suas principais obras foram: A estrutura da ação social (1937), O sistema social (1951), Economia e sociedade (1956, com N. Smelser), Estrutura e processo nas sociedades modernas (1960), Sociedades: perspectivas evolucionárias e comparativas (1966), Teoria sociológica e sociedade moderna (1968), Política e estrutura social (1969), Sistemas sociais e a evolução da teoria da ação (1977) e Teoria da ação e a condição humana (1978). -/- 3. A Universidade Columbia -/- A King’s College foi fundada em 1754, em Nova York, nos Estados Unidos. Quando as colônias inglesas se declararam independentes da Grã-Bretanha, a instituição passou a se chamar Universidade Columbia. A partir da última década do século XIX, essa universidade se destacaria por uma importante produção no campo da Sociologia, tendo como pioneiro Franklin Giddings (1855-1931), fundador da cadeira de Sociologia. Fortemente marcado pelo evolucionismo e pelo pragmatismo, foi um dos primeiros a usar métodos quantitativos e experi-mentais no estudo dos fenômenos sociais. -/- Dois sociólogos de Columbia merecem destaque, por serem muito conhecidos no Brasil: Robert K. Merton e Charles Wright Mills. -/- 3.1 Robert King Merton (1910-2003) -/- Merton nasceu na Filadélfia e faleceu em Nova York. Graduou-se em Sociologia na Universidade Temple e pós-graduou-se na Universidade Harvard, onde trabalhou com Pitirim Sorokin e Talcott Parsons até a defesa de seu doutorado, em 1936. -/- Em 1941 Merton transferiu-se para a Universidade Columbia, onde permaneceu durante 38 anos, até aposentar-se. Nessa universidade procurou integrar teoria à prática sociológica. Estudou o comportamento desviante e os processos de adaptação social, tendo por base pesquisas qualitativas e quantitativas do exercício profissional em ambiente de solidariedade e de conflito. Com Paul Lazarsfeld (1901-1976), desenvolveu o Departamento de Pesquisa Social Aplicada. -/- O nome de Merton está vinculado à proposta de criação de teorias de alcance médio, segundo a qual os sociólogos seriam mais úteis à sociedade se deixassem de lado as grandes teorias (criticando Parsons) e criassem outras de médio alcance. Essas teorias estariam situadas entre as hipóteses de trabalho rotineiras na pesquisa e as amplas especulações. Mediariam, dessa forma, as abstrações, generalizações e fundamentos empíricos da pesquisa. -/- Merton tinha uma visão humanista da função social da ciência, demonstrando influência clara de Max Weber. Concebia a ciência como um conjunto de conhecimentos compartilhados por todos os membros da sociedade, que deveriam julgar a credibilidade das postulações científicas de acordo com suas expectativas e valores morais. Mas as decisões acerca do fazer científico não caberiam à sociedade, e sim ao próprio cientista, sempre adequando seus valores aos da sociedade. -/- 3.2 Charles Wright Mills (1916-1962) -/- Charles Wright Mills (1916-1962) nasceu em Waco, no Texas, Estados Unidos. Mestre em Artes, Filosofia e Sociologia pela Universidade do Texas, concluiu, em 1942, seu doutorado em Sociologia e Antropologia pela Universidade de Wisconsin. Foi professor de Sociologia nas universidades de Maryland e Columbia, onde passou a lecionar em 1947 e permaneceu até a morte, em 1962. -/- Charles Mills representa uma tendência quase marginal na Sociologia dos Estados Unidos, por apresentar uma visão crítica e militante da sociedade estadunidense e da própria Sociologia. -/- Influenciado por Karl Marx e Max Weber, Mills procurou conciliar o conceito de classe social com o de status, visando esclarecer processos e mecanismos dos conflitos e das mudanças sociais. Por meio de pesquisas, tentou elucidar a complexidade de estruturas de poder, particularmente das elites (em lugar de classes dominantes), e de seu papel na mudança social, fugindo da ideia de revolução como única via para a transformação social. -/- Charles Wright Mills é conhecido principalmente por seu livro A imaginação sociológica, publicado originalmente nos Estados Unidos em 1959. Nele, o autor propõe que os sociólogos, ao exercer a profissão, não deixem a imaginação e a criatividade de lado em favor de uma pretensa objetividade e neutralidade do trabalho científico. Para Mills, os grandes intelectuais da história nunca abriram mão da reflexão e da criatividade e mantiveram uma postura crítica diante da realidade. -/- Atribuindo aos sociólogos a responsabilidade de agentes ativos na sociedade, cabendo-lhes tomar parte nos debates públicos de sua época, Mills defendia a ideia de que a Sociologia deveria ser compreensível para o grande público. Para ele, a ciência social era inseparável da vida pessoal do cientista: a intuição, a imaginação e o comprometimento com o tempo em que se vivia eram fundamentais para compreender cientificamente a sociedade. Suas obras foram publicadas em vários idiomas. Além da citada anteriormente, as mais importantes são: A nova classe média (1951), A elite do poder (1956), Sobre o artesanato intelectual (1959) e Os marxistas (1962). -/- Mills escreveu também artigos em revistas e dois livros que tiveram grande exposição na mídia dos Estados Unidos, por seu caráter polêmico: As causas da Terceira Guerra Mundial (1958), no qual discute a corrida nuclear, e A Revolução em Cuba (1960), em que analisa a fase inicial da Revolução Cubana. -/- Outros sociólogos que defendem uma postura crítica na Sociologia estadunidense, continuadores ou não de Charles Wright Mills, são Irving Louis Horowitz (1929-2012), Martin Nicolaus (1928-) e Alvin Gouldner (1920-1980). -/- REFERENCIAL TEÓRICO -/- BOTTOMORE, T.; et al. Dicionário do pensamento social do século XX. Trad. Eduardo Francisco Alves. Álvaro Cabral. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1996. -/- COULON, A. A Escola de Chicago. Trad. Tomás R. Bueno. 1ª ed. Campinas: Papirus, 1995. -/- CUIN, C. H.; GRESLE, F. História da Sociologia. Trad. Roberto Leal Ferreira. São Paulo: Ensaio, 1994. -/- DOMINGUES, J. M. A sociologia de Talcott Parsons. 1ª ed. São Paulo: Annablume, 2008. -/- GASTALDO, É. (org.); et al. Erving Goffman, desbravador do cotidiano. 1ª ed. Porto Alegre: Tomo Editorial, 2004. -/- NOVA, S. V. Introdução à Sociologia. 6ª ed. São Paulo: Atlas, 2004. -/- SILVA, A. et al. Sociologia em movimento. 2ª ed. São Paulo: Ática, 2016. -/- VALLADARES, L. do P. A Escola de Chicago: impacto de uma tradição no Brasil e na França. 1ª ed. Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2005. -/- VÁRIOS, autores. O livro da sociologia. As grandes ideias de todos os tempos. Trad. Rafael Longo. 1ª ed. São Paulo: Globo, 2015. -/- SBS - Sociedade Brasileira de Sociologia PUCRS - PPG em Ciências Sociais Avenida Ipiranga, 6681 - Partenon CEP: 90619-900 - Porto Alegre, RS [email protected] Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva ©2019 -/- Estimule a criatividade. Respeite os direitos autorais. (shrink)

This tenth volume of Collected Papers includes 86 papers in English and Spanish languages comprising 972 pages, written between 2014-2022 by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 105 co-authors (alphabetically ordered) from 26 countries: Abu Sufian, Ali Hassan, Ali Safaa Sadiq, Anirudha Ghosh, Assia Bakali, Atiqe Ur Rahman, Laura Bogdan, Willem K.M. Brauers, Erick González Caballero, Fausto Cavallaro, Gavrilă Calefariu, T. Chalapathi, Victor Christianto, Mihaela Colhon, Sergiu Boris Cononovici, Mamoni Dhar, Irfan Deli, Rebeca Escobar-Jara, Alexandru Gal, N. (...) Gandotra, Sudipta Gayen, Vassilis C. Gerogiannis, Noel Batista Hernández, Hongnian Yu, Hongbo Wang, Mihaiela Iliescu, F. Nirmala Irudayam, Sripati Jha, Darjan Karabašević, T. Katican, Bakhtawar Ali Khan, Hina Khan, Volodymyr Krasnoholovets, R. Kiran Kumar, Manoranjan Kumar Singh, Ranjan Kumar, M. Lathamaheswari, Yasar Mahmood, Nivetha Martin, Adrian Mărgean, Octavian Melinte, Mingcong Deng, Marcel Migdalovici, Monika Moga, Sana Moin, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Mohamed Elhoseny, Rehab Mohamed, Mohamed Talea, Kalyan Mondal, Muhammad Aslam, Muhammad Aslam Malik, Muhammad Ihsan, Muhammad Naveed Jafar, Muhammad Rayees Ahmad, Muhammad Saeed, Muhammad Saqlain, Muhammad Shabir, Mujahid Abbas, Mumtaz Ali, Radu I. Munteanu, Ghulam Murtaza, Munazza Naz, Tahsin Oner, ‪Gabrijela Popović‬‬‬‬‬, Surapati Pramanik, R. Priya, S.P. Priyadharshini, Midha Qayyum, Quang-Thinh Bui, Shazia Rana, Akbara Rezaei, Jesús Estupiñán Ricardo, Rıdvan Sahin, Saeeda Mirvakili, Said Broumi, A. A. Salama, Flavius Aurelian Sârbu, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Javid Shabbir, Shio Gai Quek, Son Hoang Le, Florentin Smarandache, Dragiša Stanujkić, S. Sudha, Taha Yasin Ozturk, Zaigham Tahir, The Houw Iong, Ayse Topal, Alptekin Ulutaș, Maikel Yelandi Leyva Vázquez, Rizha Vitania, Luige Vlădăreanu, Victor Vlădăreanu, Ștefan Vlăduțescu, J. Vimala, Dan Valeriu Voinea, Adem Yolcu, Yongfei Feng, Abd El-Nasser H. Zaied, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas.‬‬. (shrink)

Key words: inter-religious dialogue, Islam, Christianity, World Council of Churches, bilateral meetings. Summary: The inter-religious dialogue represents a necessity of our time. Apart from the issues that have arisen during the debates, each participant understands its necessity. The Orthodox Churches have always been involved in inter-religious meetings and the voices of their spokesmen have always been heard, calling their partners to draw their attention to the major issues. Within the framework of these discussions, the dialogue with the Islam occupies, alongside (...) the one with the Jews, an essential place. Keeping in mind the latest events, especially after September 11th 2001, the dialogue with the Islam has a major role on the agenda of every meeting. The Orthodox churches bring before their partners to the inter-religious dialogue examples from their history. time. Many times tragic, they provide a solid ground for the process of rethinking the dialogue, with the most important issues in mind. (shrink)

According to our understanding, when we discuss about the religious life in Romania, one must take into account, first of all, the characteristics of this people, its culture and traditions that are over two millennia old. The similarities and differences with the organization and functioning of other religious systems in Europe and around the world cannot and must not exclude the defining elements of a people that has asserted its origins and defended its spiritual integrity over the centuries. In our (...) country there is a close connection between the history, culture, spirituality and education of this people of Latin origin and mostly of Orthodox faith. Starting from these realities, the Romanian Orthodox Church had an important role in preserving the values and national identity in the face of the frequent stepsons of history. Regarding interreligious education in Romania, it is done in public schools, with the discipline of Religion, where, especially in high school, there are classes in the History of Religions in which one learns about religious traditions around the world and how to interact with people belonging to other denominations, religions and ideologies. The phenomenon of migration increases in our country from one year to another producing important changes in terms of economic, cultural, social and religious realities. Taking into account all these realities, the state must promote policies that protect migrant populations and defend human rights for these communities. At the same time, they must be actively involved in protecting families where one or more members are working abroad and in the process of educating children who remain in the care of relatives. (shrink)

There remains no consensus among social scientists as to how to measure and understand forms of information deprivation such as misinformation. Machine learning and statistical analyses of information deprivation typically contain problematic operationalizations which are too often biased towards epistemic elites' conceptions that can undermine their empirical adequacy. A mature science of information deprivation should include considerable citizen involvement that is sensitive to the value-ladenness of information quality and that doing so may improve the predictive and explanatory power of extant (...) models. (shrink)

Governments and social scientists are increasingly developing machine learning methods to automate the process of identifying terrorists in real time and predict future attacks. However, current operationalizations of “terrorist”’ in artificial intelligence are difficult to justify given three issues that remain neglected: insufficient construct legitimacy, insufficient criterion validity, and insufficient construct validity. I conclude that machine learning methods should be at most used for the identification of singular individuals deemed terrorists and not for identifying possible terrorists from some more general (...) class, nor to predict terrorist attacks more broadly, given intolerably high risks that result from such approaches. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the ethical concerns that may arise from the synthesis of human DNA. To date, only small stretches of DNA have been constructed, but the prospect of generating human genomes is becoming feasible. At the same time, the significance of genes for identity, health and reproduction is coming under increased scrutiny. We examine the implications of DNA synthesis and its impact on debates over the relationship with our DNA and the ownership of our genes, its potential (...) to disrupt common understandings of reproduction and privacy, and the way in which synthetic DNA challenges traditional associations between genes and identity. We explore the degree to which synthetic DNA may further undermine overgeneticised accounts of identity, health, reproduction, parenthood and privacy that are prevalent in the public domain and in some areas of policy-making. While avoiding making normative claims of our own, we conclude that there is a need for reflection on the ethical implications of these developing technologies before they are on us. (shrink)

Advocates of radical realist theories of legitimacy propose that political legitimation narratives are often void where they show signs of motivated reasoning. In a recent critique of the method, example cases have been put forward in which an analysis and critique of flawed justification narratives seems urgently called for, and yet motivated reasoning is absent. This, critics suggest, should deflate the prominence of motivated reasoning within the radical realism. I argue here that those cases are misconstrued. Motivated reasoning can either (...) be easily identified therein, or the cases are irrelevant to begin with. The issue with realism’s motivated reasoning connection is another: the explanatory direction of fit between epistemic circularity and motivated reasoning. The former explains the normative salience of the latter. Hence, I hope this intervention clarifies a misunderstood and underexplored aspect of contemporary radical realist theory and adds to the contextualisation of the psychology of motivated reasoning within normative social theory more broadly. (shrink)

Multicellular organisms contain numerous symbiotic microorganisms, collectively called microbiomes. Recently, microbiomic research has shown that these microorganisms are responsible for the proper functioning of many of the systems (digestive, immune, nervous, etc.) of multicellular organisms. This has inclined some scholars to argue that it is about time to reconceptualise the organism and to develop a concept that would place the greatest emphasis on the vital role of microorganisms in the life of plants and animals. We believe that, unfortunately, there is (...) a problem with this suggestion, since there is no such thing as a universal concept of the organism which could constitute a basis for all biological sciences. Rather, the opposite is true: numerous alternative definitions exist. Therefore, comprehending how microbiomics is changing our understanding of organisms may be a very complex matter. In this paper we will demonstrate that this pluralism proves that claims about a change in our understanding of organisms can be treated as both true and untrue. Mainly, we assert that the existing concepts differ substantially, and that only some of them have to be reconsidered in order to incorporate the discoveries of microbiomics, while others are already flexible enough to do so. Taking into account the plurality of conceptualisations within different branches of modern biology, we will conduct our discussion using the developmental and the cooperation–conflict concepts of the organism. Then we will explain our results by referring to the recent philosophical debate on the nature of the concept of the organism within biology. (shrink)

A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that folk knowledge attribution practices regarding some epistemological thought experiments differ significantly from the consensus found in the philosophical literature. More specifically, laypersons are likely to ascribe knowledge in the so-called Authentic Evidence Gettier-style cases, while most philosophers deny knowledge in these cases. The intuitions shared by philosophers are often used as evidence in favor (or against) certain philosophical analyses of the notion of knowledge. However, the fact that these intuitions are not universal, (...) as non-philosophers do not sympathize with verdicts made by philosophers, is problematic and requires some explanation. Recently, a promising theoretical approach emerged that could be used to explain away unexpected folk knowledge attributions. According to the protagonist projection hypothesis, when subjects answer questions about some hypothetical scenario, their judgments might result from adopting the cognitive perspective of the protagonist in the given scenario. Previous experimental findings suggest protagonist projection might be responsible for problematic knowledge attributions in Gettier-style cases. This paper reports data collected in an experiment which focused on five different Authentic Evidence Gettier-style scenarios and investigated the impact of protagonist projection on folk knowledge ascriptions in such cases. The results bring some support to the protagonist projection hypothesis, but do not allow to explain away a substantial number of problematic folk knowledge attributions. (shrink)

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth’s unduly neglected monograph New and Old Methods of Ethics (1877) advances a highly sophisticated and mathematized account of social well-being in the utilitarian tradition of his 19th-century contemporaries. This article illustrates how his usage of the ‘calculus of variations’ was combined with findings from empirical psychology and economic theory to construct a consequentialist axiological framework. A conclusion is drawn that Edgeworth is a methodological predecessor to several important methods, ideas, and issues that continue to be discussed in (...) contemporary social well-being studies. (shrink)

One of the insights of dynamic semantics in its various guises (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982, Groenendijk & Stokhof 1991, Kamp & Reyle 1993 among many others) is that interpretation is sensitive to left-to-right order. Is order sensitivity, particularly the default left-to-right order of evaluation, a property of particular meanings of certain lexical items (e.g., dynamically interpreted conjunction) or is it a more general feature of meaning composition? If it is a more general feature of meaning composition, is it a processing (...) ‘preference’ or should it be captured as a ‘harder’ constraint on the type of meanings and operations over meanings involved in natural language interpretation? This squib draws attention to the symmetrical A-too B-too construction (found in a variety of languages, e.g., Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian, Russian) in this context. It argues that any semantic analysis of its main ‘symmetrical-meaning’ characteristic should also allow for subtler interactions between this construction and items that are clearly sensitive to evaluation-order effects, e.g., anaphoric adjectives like next and other. We suggest that the notion of postsupposition embedded in a broader dynamic framework is better able to account for both the symmetric nature of this construction, its non-symmetric variant A-too, and its interaction with items that are evaluation-order sensitive. We briefly compare this proposal with a couple of possible alternative accounts. (shrink)

The history of economic thought witnessed several prominent economists who took seriously models and concepts in physics for the elucidation and prediction of economic phenomena. Econophysics is an emerging discipline at the intersection of heterodox economics and the physics of complex systems, with practitioners typically engaged in two overlapping but distinct methodological programs. The first is to export mathematical methods used in physics for the purposes of studying economic phenomena. The second is to export mechanisms in physics into economics. A (...) conclusion is drawn that physics transfer is often justified at the level of mathematical transfer but unjustified at the level of mechanistic transfer. (shrink)

‘Performative’ transcendental arguments exploit the status of a subcategory of self-falsifying propositions in showing that some form of skepticism is unsustainable. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between performatively inconsistent propositions and transcendental arguments, and then to compare performative transcendental arguments to modest transcendental arguments that seek only to establish the indispensability of some belief or conceptual framework. Reconceptualizing transcendental arguments as performative helps focus the intended dilemma for the skeptic: performative transcendental arguments directly confront the (...) skeptic with the choice of abandoning either skepticism or some other deep theoretical commitment. Many philosophers, from Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas to Jaakko Hintikka, C.I. Lewis, and Bernard Lonergan, have claimed that some skeptical propositions regarding knowledge, reason, and/or morality can be shown to be self-defeating; that is to say, they have claimed that the very upholding of some skeptical position is in some way incompatible with the position being upheld, or with the implied, broader dialectical position of the skeptic in question. Statements or propositions alleged to have this characteristic also sometimes are called ‘self-falsifying,’ ‘self-refuting,’ ‘self-stultifying,’ ‘self-destructive,’ or ‘pointless.’ However, proponents of the strategy of showing skepticism to be self-defeating have not in general adequately distinguished between two types of self-defeating proposition: self-falsifying and self-stultifying. In the first part of this paper I distinguish between self-falsifying and self-stultifying propositions, and introduce the notion of performative self-falsification. In the second part I discuss classical transcendental arguments, ‘modest’ transcendental arguments, and objections to each. In the third part I introduce two types of transcendental argument—each labeled “performative”—corresponding to two types of performatively self-falsifying proposition, and I compare them to modest transcendental arguments. (shrink)

I wish to defend the claim that given the content and structure of any moral theory we are likely to find palatable, there is no way of uniquely breaking down that theory into either consequentialist or deontological elements. Indeed, once we examine the actual structure of any such theory more closely, we see that it can be classified in either way arbitrarily. Hence if we ignore the metaethical pronouncements often made by adherents of the consequentialist-deontological distinction, we are quickly led (...) to the conclusion that this distinction contributes nothing of consequence to an understanding of moral theory. I will try to show that there are basically two reasons for this. First, what we mean by the terms endemic to the consequentialist-deontological distinction have no unique references to particular states of affairs in actual cases of moral decision making. Hence we may justify any such concrete moral decision by reference to typically consequentialist or deontological reasoning indifferently. Second, scrutiny of actual and viable moral theories reveals a much finer-grained structure than the consequentialist-deontological taxonomy can capture. And it is this structure, rather than simple attention to consequences or principles, that determines practical moral decision making. We would thus do better to develop the richer vocabulary of causes and constituents, goals and effects, states and events (mental, social, or physical). So in the end, the consequentialist-deontological distinction is irrelevant at the normative level of actual moral reasoning, whereas at the metaethical level it crudely schematizes two opposing types of dummy theory, neither of which is convincing, upon reflection, to any practicing moral philosopher. (shrink)

According to contextualism, vast majority of natural-language expressions are context-sensitive. When testing whether this claim is reflected in Folk intuitions, some interesting methodological questions were raised such as: which experimental design is more appropriate for testing contextualism – the within- or the between-subject design? The main thesis of this paper is that the between-subject design should be preferred. The first experiment aims at assessing the difference between the results obtained for within-subjects measurements (where all participants assess all contexts) and between-subject (...) measurements (where respondents evaluating different contexts are distinct groups). It is shown that the within-subject design provides data that seems to support contextualism. However, I present an alternative, invariantist interpretation of these results, therefore showing that the within-subject design does not allow to empirically distinguish between contextualism and invariantism. The second experiment further elaborates the issue of how perceiving the contrast between contexts can affect subjects’ judgments – I show that certain kinds of contexts may elicit opposite intuitions when contrasted with different contexts. (shrink)

An understanding of the factors behind the evolution of multicellularity is one of today’s frontiers in evolutionary biology. This is because multicellular organisms are made of one subset of cells with the capacity to transmit genes to the next generation and another subset responsible for maintaining the functionality of the organism, but incapable of transmitting genes to the next generation. The question arises: why do somatic cells sacrifice their lives for the sake of germline cells? How is germ/soma separation maintained? (...) One conventional answer refers to inclusive fitness theory, according to which somatic cells sacrifice themselves altruistically, because in so doing they enhance the transmission of their genes by virtue of their genetic relatedness to germline cells. In the present article we will argue that this explanation ignores the key role of policing mechanisms in maintaining the germ/soma divide. Based on the pervasiveness of the latter, we argue that the role of altruistic mechanisms in the evolution of multicellularity is limited and that our understanding of this evolution must be enriched through the consideration of coercion mechanisms. (shrink)

Do salient normative claims about politics require moral premises? Political moralists think they do, political realists think they do not. We defend the viability of realism in a two-pronged way. First, we show that a number of recent attacks on realism, as well as realist responses to those attacks, unduly conflate distinctively political normativity and non-moral political normativity. Second, we argue that Alex Worsnip and Jonathan Leader-Maynard’s recent attack on realist arguments for a distinctively political normativity depends on assuming moralism (...) as the default view, which places an excessive burden on the viability of realism, and so begs the question. Our discussion, though, does not address the relative merits of realism and moralism, so its upshot is relatively ecumenical: moralism need not be the view that all apt normative political judgments are moral judgments, and realism need not be the view that no apt normative political judgments are moral judgments. (shrink)

: Decisions about funding health services are crucial to controlling costs in health care insurance plans, yet they encounter serious challenges from intellectual property protection—e.g., patents—of health care services. Using Myriad Genetics' commercial genetic susceptibility test for hereditary breast cancer (BRCA testing) in the context of the Canadian health insurance system as a case study, this paper applies concepts from social contract theory to help develop more just and rational approaches to health care decision making. Specifically, Daniels's and Sabin's "accountability (...) for reasonableness" is compared to broader notions of public consultation, demonstrating that expert assessments in specific decisions must be transparent and accountable and supplemented by public consultation. (shrink)

Commentary on: Olaf Blanke, Thomas Metzinger, Full-body illusions and minimal phenomenal selfhood, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 13, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 7-13, ISSN 1364-6613, DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2008.10.003.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of internet access across various aspects of life, from remote work and online education to healthcare services and social connections. As we transition to a post-pandemic era, a pressing need arises to update our understanding of the multifaceted nature of internet access. This study is one of the first attempts to do so. Using survey data from New Zealand adult internet users (n=960), it compares internet connection types, frequency of internet use at home, social (...) media use, and concerns about online risk between people with and without disabilities. Results show people with disabilities have restricted fibre access and higher wireless broadband (a much slower connection type). People with disabilities use social media platforms less and are more concerned about certain online risks. The findings highlight persistent disparities in internet access for people with disabilities in the post-pandemic era. Implications of the study are discussed. (shrink)

Adrian Piper argues that the Humean conception can be made to work only if it is placed in the context of a wider and genuinely universal conception of the self, whose origins are to be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. This conception comprises the basic canons of classical logic, which provide both a model of motivation and a model of rationality. These supply necessary conditions both for the coherence and integrity of the self and also for unified (...) agency. The Kantian conception solves certain intractable problems in decision theory by integrating it into classical predicate logic, and provides answers to longstanding controversies in metaethics concerning moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification that the Humean conception engenders. In addition, it sheds light on certain kinds of moral behavior – for example, the whistleblower – that the Humean conception is at a loss to explain. (shrink)

The theorist who denies the objective reality of non-relational temporal properties, or ‘A-series’ determinations, must explain our experience of the passage of time. D.H. Mellor, a prominent denier of the objective reality of temporal passage, draws, in part, on Kant in offering a theory according to which the experience of temporal passage is the result of the projection of change in belief. But Mellor has missed some important points Kant has to make about time-awareness. It turns out that Kant's theory (...) of time-awareness also involves projection – but for him, the projection of temporal passage is necessary to any coherent experience at all, and for this reason events in the world cannot be represented except as exhibiting real tensed change. Consequently we cannot intelligibly suppose the world we know to be without the passage of time. This fact would permit a modest transcendental argument the conclusion of which is that we are entitled to describe the world in terms of temporal passage. (shrink)

The two kinds of discrimination I want to talk about are political discrimination and cognitive discrimination. By political discrimination, I mean what we ordinarily understand by the term "discrimination" in political contexts: A manifest attitude in which a particular property of a person which is irrelevant to judgments of that person's intrinsic value or competence, for example his race, gender, class, sexual orientation, or religious or ethnic affiliation, is seen as a source of disvalue or incompetence; in general, as a (...) source of inferiority.By cognitive discrimination, I mean what we ordinarily understand by the term "discrimination" in cognitive contexts: A manifest capacity to distinguish veridically between one property and another, and to respond appropriately to each. I want to explore the relation between these two kinds of discrimination, and to argue that the first type of discrimination depends upon a failure of the second. (shrink)

We need modal imagination in order to extend our conception of reality - and, in particular, of human beings - beyond our immediate experience in the indexical present; and we need to do this in order to preserve the significance of human interaction. To make this leap of imagination successfully is to achieve not only insight but also an impartial perspective on our own and others' inner states. This perspective is a necessary condition of experiencing compassion for others. This is (...) the primary thesis I will try to defend in this discussion. (shrink)

Political realists have argued that ‘the political’ is an autonomous domain with its own distinctive concepts, distinctive methodology, and distinctive ‘source of normativity’. I here explore the metanormative commitments of realism (of the radical realist branch, in particular) and question the viability of exploring the ontology of the normative altogether. I argue that the escape into the metanormative realm was something of a wrong turn within the realism debates – an intellectual error. My central argument, building on recent metatheoretical work (...) on normativity, is meant to discredit the sheer possibility of metanormative distinctness. If realists can neither prove metanormative, nor traditional, nor methodological distinctness, there is a valid question as to its standing. I speculate, perhaps realism is little more than a new semantic label for ‘continental’ practices of social analysis as they leak into the analytic tradition. But then again it can be argued that most contemporary continental thought, and certainly much of what passes as critical theory these days, is thoroughly moralist, anti-positivist, and postmodern, and those sentiments are not shared by radical realists, who are, or so I’ll argue, far more faithful to the modernist tradition of social theory. (shrink)

This essay was written for a special issue of Philosophical Topics on the links between Kant and analytic philosophy. It explores these links through consideration of: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus; the logical positivism endorsed by Ayer; and the (very different) variation on that theme endorsed by Quine. It is argued that in all three cases we see analytic philosophers trying to attain and express a general philosophical understanding of why the bounds of sense should be drawn where they should—but thereby confronting the (...) aporia, which Kant too confronted, that it is impossible to do this without transgressing those very bounds. It is suggested in conclusion that the problem is in trying to attain and express such an understanding; in other words, that such an understanding is attainable, but not expressible. (shrink)

[A. W. Moore] Criteria of ineffability are presented which, it is claimed, preclude the possibility of truths that are ineffable, but not the possibility of other things that are ineffable—not even the possibility of other things that are non-trivially ineffable. Specifically, they do not preclude the possibility of states of understanding that are ineffable. This, it is argued, allows for a reappraisal of the dispute between those who adopt a traditional reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and those who adopt the new (...) reading recently championed by Cora Diamond, James Conant, and others. By maintaining that what the nonsense in the Tractatus is supposed to convey is ineffable understanding, rather than ineffable truth, we can do considerable justice to each of these readings. We can also do considerable justice to the Tractatus. /// [Peter Sullivan] Moore proposes to cut between 'traditional' and 'new' approaches to the Tractatus, suggesting that Wittgenstein's intention is to convey, through the knowing use of nonsense, ineffable understanding. I argue, first, that there is indeed room for a proposal of Moore's general kind. Secondly, though, I question whether Moore's actual proposal is not more in tune with Wittgenstein's later thought than with the attitude of the Tractatus. (shrink)

The recent publications reported in 2022 reveal the possibility of obtaining mouse embryos without the need for egg or sperm. These ‘artificial embryos’ can recapitulate some stages of development ex utero – from neurulation to organogenesis – without implantation. Synthetic mouse embryos might serve as a valuable model to gain further insights into early developmental stages. Indeed, it is expected for these models to be replicated by employing human cells. This promising research raises ethical issues and expands the horizon of (...) ethics in regard to the development of the human embryo. From this point of view, we state some of the new open venues for bioethical research. (shrink)

Current methods of operationalizing concepts of misinformation in machine learning are often problematic given idiosyncrasies in their success conditions compared to other models employed in the natural and social sciences. The intrinsic value-ladenness of misinformation and the dynamic relationship between citizens' and social scientists' concepts of misinformation jointly suggest that both the construct legitimacy and the construct validity of these models needs to be assessed via more democratic criteria than has previously been recognized.